


Deal With It

by usakiwigirl



Series: No Excuses [2]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Internal Monologue, M/M, POV First Person, Possibly Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 13:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/usakiwigirl/pseuds/usakiwigirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I've been a military man for a good long time, and I'm used to things being done a certain way. I've had to change the way I do some things now that I'm in the Reserves, but the job as Five-0 leader makes it all worth while.</p><p>Working with Danny, however, is interesting and challenging in entirely different ways. And I just have to deal with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deal With It

**Author's Note:**

> A poor follow-up to Because of Steve - I have a hard time catching Steve's voice in first person POV, so I don't think this one is up to the same standard as the other.
> 
> Still, I leave it in your capable hands, dear readers, to be the final judge!
> 
> Not beta'd, obviously. Not owned by me either. No disrespect intended.

I don’t know why he’s always angry. I mean, this is Hawai’i, for a start; blue sky, warm water, golden sand, perfect weather. Seriously, what’s not to like? It’s paradise. But no, all he does his bitch and bitch about this “pineapple-infested hell-hole”, as he puts it. How pineapple is on everything, in everything, covers everything. Duh! It grows here, what does he expect? In no way is Hawai’i even close to New Jersey, not physically or spiritually or intellectually, and it’s high time he accepted that.

But it’s not just the pineapple, and the weather, and the sand that he’s always moaning about; he never lets up about me, either. How I’m emotionally stunted, or I have no grasp of police procedures, or how bad my driving is – or get this, I love this one – how terrible my paperwork is. None of them are true, not a one.

Okay, before he finds a new fault with me, I better introduce myself; I’m Lieutenant Commander Steven McGarrett, US Navy Reserves and the leader of Five-0, the Governor of Hawai’i’s special task force. I’m also a SEAL – you know, Sea, Air and Land, special forces for the Navy – and a damn good one, if I say so myself. After all, I’m still alive, aren’t I? Not a mean feat for a man who’s seen and done some pretty dangerous shit over the years, not that I can tell you about it. Sorry, but it’s all classified. And doesn’t that just burn Danny’s butt. Right, Danny – he’s the one I’ve been telling you about; Detective Daniel Williams, my second-in-command. He’s short, mouthy, and a damn good cop. He’s passionate as all hell when it comes to his work, especially about any cases that concern children, most likely because of his own daughter, Grace. Now there’s an angel who has her Daddy wrapped around her finger. I saw that when I was a kid with my little sister Mary and my Dad, before my Mom died – well, before we thought she died, but I’m not gonna go into that right now – anyway, Mary had Dad wrapped so tight all she had to do was twitch and he’d come running. He’d do anything for her. I think it’s one of the things that burned us the most when he sent us away after she… no, like I said, not going there right now.

Little Grace Williams has her Danno – that’s what she calls Danny – all tied up, and the rest of us at Five-0 (Chin Ho Kelly and Kono Kalakaua) are just as ensnared. We’d all move the earth for that little girl. Danny’s a lucky man to have a daughter like her, and he knows it. Doesn’t stop him from pissing up a storm if he thinks we need reminding, however.

Danno doesn’t just save his passion for Grace, and any other hurt children though. He shows no hesitation in waving his arms in my face with plenty of _passion_ when he tells me off about my driving, for one. I’m telling you, there is nothing wrong with my driving; it’s why I insist on taking his car keys off him as often as I can. He’s a Granny behind the wheel. There’s keeping to the speed limit, and then there’s holding up traffic because the vehicular speed is too slow. Okay, he’s not really a Granny. Truth is, I just like to drive, what can I say? Despite what Danny says though, I don’t corner too fast, I do watch the road – and the other vehicles around me – and I rarely travel more than five miles above the posted limit, unless there is a definite need. Okay, ten miles, but it’s not my fault that the need is there more often than not. It may be hard for him to believe, but I actually have papers to prove that I am a certified, professional driver – I have completed, on more than one occasion, a course commonly known as Crash Bang, to learn how to manoeuvre around, and avoid tricky situations. The SEALs also taught me a few extra tricks that Crash Bang didn’t, such as wielding a weapon while still behind the wheel of a rapidly moving vehicle. Danny just needs to learn to relax, and trust me. I think, after three years, I’ve proved my skill behind the wheel. He still has his Camaro, doesn’t he? It’s even mostly without scratches. Pretty damn good for a vehicle that’s involved in a police chase at least once a week.

Okay, the police procedures were a little tricky, I’ll give him that, at least at the beginning. I didn’t know Miranda – only what I’d heard from movies or the odd television show, but over the years, I’ve seen very little that the average person takes for granted, so there’s that. I’ve just been too busy saving lives and doing shit behind the scenes. Hey, that’s my life and I liked it. I wouldn’t change any of it. Well, not the Navy and SEAL stuff, anyway. The point is, I’ve learned all that Miranda stuff over the last three years. I know it now, I just choose to have Danno say it. Come on, the look on his face when I say “Book ‘em, Danno,” is just priceless. It’s worth the glare, every time.

The same thing could be said for the paperwork; I just didn’t know how to do that particular paperwork. It’s not like I don’t know how to do paperwork at all, for cryin’ out loud. Come on, I’ve been in the Navy for more than ten years, I’ve filled out more than my fair share of forms and shit! Believe me, the military can outdo any municipal police department on the number of forms, and the amount of paperwork generated any day of the week, guaranteed. They’re government, it’s in their blood, they can’t help it, even if they wear a uniform. So Five-0’s paperwork looked different, yes, but after a couple of months, and some fairly big and complicated cases, I got it. Not to mention, they’re all electronic now, so I don’t have to worry about some wag with nothing better to do turfing it back to me with complaints about my penmanship. Which is just fine, by the way. Think about it – Dad was an old-school cop, Mom was a teacher; you think they were going to let me have sloppy handwriting? Think again, genius.

The one that really gets me – I mean really annoys the hell out of me, every single time – is when he calls me emotionally stunted. I’m not. Seriously, that hurts, man. It really stings. My emotions are just fine. I may not wear them out for the whole world to see, like he does, but they’re there, and they’re fully developed, just as his are. Just because I don’t flap my arms like a wounded chicken every time I speak, or I don’t laugh out loud at something funny, doesn’t mean I’m not feeling anything. I mean, yeah, my people skills aren’t the same as his, but that doesn’t mean that I’m deficient in any way; I’m military, damn it. It’s how I’ve been trained, for many years now, to react in certain situations. Like that small girl who came up to Danno and I outside Kamekona’s shave ice stand the first day we met – Danny thinks I handled her badly, that I didn’t know how to talk to a small child. Maybe I don’t – didn’t, whatever – the thing is, most of my interactions with children have not been positive experiences. You would not believe the shit I’ve seen; did you know there are some seriously sick fuckers (pardon my language) who actually use their own children as bait, as live bombs to get at American soldiers on the ground? No, I mean it, they really do. We learned, the hard way, not to trust anyone, not even the cute and helpless looking. It was a real shame, too, as most of those poor little ones didn’t even know what they were doing, or carrying. Cute little buggers, but deadly as all hell. I guess when I first got back on the island, I was still kind of locked in that mind-set. Hey, I was pretty much over it by the time I met Grace, so cut me a little slack.

And not just with children; I know I was a little brusque when we first started out as a team. I couldn’t help it. I was the leader of my SEAL team; I was – and still am, to a certain extent, what with my regular Reserve duties – used to people following my orders without question. Of course, I get questioned now all the time, and I’m not so much ordering my team to do things, as requesting and leading them in the right direction. My direction, of course, but I’m more open to other possibilities than I used to be, I’ll admit. I’ll give Danny the credit for that. He’s taught me a lot, about police work in particular and life in general.

But see, I don’t like to admit this – okay, Danny is kind of right about this, I don’t like to talk about myself, but that’s because it’s nobody’s business but mine, not because I’m emotionally stunted – I’ve come to rely on Danny, maybe just a little too much. The whole thing was kind of gradual, you know? We were just always together, so I never really noticed it, until he wasn’t around, and I realised I missed his constant whining and arm-waving. When I went to North Korea after Wo Fat – a disaster of epic proportions, not one I’m proud of – I spent most of that time wishing Danny was there complaining about useless shit, because even if I tuned him out, it would have been white noise to drown out the thoughts that crowded my head and ruined my concentration. Maybe Jenna would still be alive. Maybe not – who knows. Chances are, the whole thing wouldn’t have been the clusterfuck that it turned into, at least. Pardon the language again. Just seeing his face when he pulled back the curtain on the truck made the sun shine brighter. And that’s weird, because he isn’t SEAL-trained, or anything like that. He’s a loud-mouthed Jersey cop, that’s all. He had no business even being in-country, let alone traipsing through the jungle pulling my sorry ass out of the fire.

Like I said, though, that was when I first realised that I needed him; with me, near me, working with me, for me, beside me, always. I thought that was all it was, for the longest time, hand on my heart, swear to God. Even through his aborted reunion with Rachel I thought I just needed him as a work partner. Until the bomb.

See, he got caught in the snare of a dirty bomb. He couldn’t move, or he was dead. And I couldn’t leave him. He wanted me to, I know he did – he asked me to, pleaded with me to go even. He wanted me to tell Grace how much he loved her, but I wasn’t going to let him do that to her; he had to get out of the situation and tell her himself, it was his responsibility as her father. But I also wasn’t going to leave him there to die alone if it all went to hell. That was when it hit me, like a bullet between the eyes, that I didn’t just need him as a partner at work, but in my life as well. There would be no life for me if Danno was gone. I would be a shell; empty, dried out, emotionless. The stunted Neanderthal that he is always accusing me of being. No, if Danny was going to die, I would die with him. End of story. I just couldn’t tell him why.

Why couldn’t I tell him? Well, there are a couple of reasons, and I think they’re pretty good ones, so no judging, okay? First, he’s got a girlfriend, Gabby. He’s had a shit few years since his marriage broke up, and I know he lost his confidence for a while. He shouldn’t have, because for all he’s short, he’s a good-looking guy and he’s in fine shape. The man has shoulders and arms most guys would kill for, and I know I give him hell for his shirts, but to be honest, there’s a fair amount of jealousy behind it, because he makes the damn things look good. I mean, really good. Although he’s either buying smaller shirts, or he’s put on some muscle over the last year, because he’s in serious danger of losing the buttons some days. What, I noticed – it’s hard not to, when the material is straining across his chest, which is also pretty damn fine to look at, I might add.

Second, I’m military, and I know DADT has been repealed, blah blah, but old habits die hard. Just because it’s gone, doesn’t mean that prejudices have been erased. I still have Reserve duties to carry out, and I don’t need insubordination from those in my command just because they don’t agree with how I choose to live my life. Plus, there’s Catherine, and while she’s not my girlfriend as such, it would be rude to just dump her suddenly for a guy. There’s gotta be some sort of procedure about that, I don’t know.

Third? Well, I’ve not seen any evidence that Danny is in any way inclined toward guys, our constant flirting notwithstanding. I mean, yeah, we hug all the time, and backslaps are pretty common, but I think that’s just Danny, you know? He’s a physical guy, it goes with his personality. But he strikes me as purely hetero, whereas me, I’m a little more fluid, I guess you could say. No, it’s got nothing to do with the Navy (I’ve heard all the jokes, but you can forget about them, okay, they’re not all true). I was already like this before I joined. If anything, I’ve had to suppress that part of me – you forget, DADT was around for far longer than it’s been gone.

Look, the point is, my friendship with Danny is just too important to screw up. I need him, like air and water, but I’ll manage with what I have. At least he’s close. He’s here, on the island, and he’s gonna stay, now that the judge has given him better custody of Grace. If she’s not moving, he’s not moving. He’s here, and I get to argue with him, work with him, and spend time with him.

That’s all I can have.

The fact that I might want more, is not going to happen. I just have to deal with it.


End file.
